LeBron James not returning to Lakers, plans to play 24th season elsewhere

Le­Bron James will not be back with the Los An­ge­les Lak­ers and plans to play a record-ex­tend­ing 24th NBA sea­son else­where.

His de­ci­sion is per­haps the biggest domi­no that will fall dur­ing the NBA’s off­sea­son play­er move­ment win­dow, along­side Gi­an­nis An­te­tok­oun­m­po be­ing trad­ed by Mil­wau­kee to Mi­a­mi — one of James’ for­mer stops.

The Lak­ers re­leased a state­ment Tues­day thank­ing James for his eight sea­sons with the club.

“Le­Bron James is one of the great­est ath­letes in his­to­ry,” said Jeanie Buss, part of the Lak­ers’ own­er­ship group. “We will al­ways be thank­ful for his eight years with the Lak­ers, in­clud­ing the ti­tle he led us to in 2020 un­der the tough­est imag­in­able cir­cum­stances, and the count­less records he broke in pur­ple and gold. We wish him all the best in the fu­ture, both on the court and off. He will al­ways be a cher­ished part of the Lak­ers fam­i­ly.”

ES­PN, cit­ing James’ long­time agent and Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul, first re­port­ed James’ plans.

James can be­gin talk­ing of­fi­cial­ly to new clubs af­ter 6 p.m. EDT on Tues­day, when the league’s free agent pe­ri­od opens. He will not be able to sign with a new team un­til the league’s off­sea­son mora­to­ri­um is lift­ed on Ju­ly 6.

A slew of op­tions will be avail­able to James on the open mar­ket, in­clud­ing Gold­en State. Long­time War­riors for­ward Dray­mond Green did not ex­er­cise his $27.6 mil­lion op­tion for this com­ing sea­son ear­li­er this week in large part to al­low his team flex­i­bil­i­ty to make oth­er ros­ter moves.

“Per­son­al­ly, I’m al­ways will­ing to work with the team on what­ev­er is best, es­pe­cial­ly at this point in my ca­reer,” Green said on the lat­est episode of his pod­cast, which was re­leased Tues­day. “So my de­ci­sion to opt out was for a few rea­sons. As you all know, I’ve al­ways tak­en the ap­proach of work­ing with the or­ga­ni­za­tion. I’ve been in one place for 14 years. It’s more of a fam­i­ly to me than any­thing.”

It could be the move that con­vinces James to go to Gold­en State — a fran­chise he faced four times with Cleve­land in the NBA Fi­nals. He al­so has close re­la­tion­ships with Green, Stephen Cur­ry and War­riors coach Steve Kerr.

James spent eight sea­sons with the Lak­ers, the longest he spent in one stint with one NBA team and led them to the 2020 NBA cham­pi­onship. He be­came the NBA’s all-time points leader while wear­ing a Lak­ers uni­form and sur­passed a slew of oth­er records while in pur­ple and gold.

He spent the first sev­en years of his ca­reer in Cleve­land, then left for four years in Mi­a­mi where he won the first two of his four cham­pi­onships. That was fol­lowed by an­oth­er four-year stint with the Cav­a­liers, and in 2018 he joined the Lak­ers.

James is the NBA’s old­est ac­tive play­er; he turns 42 in De­cem­ber. He was the first play­er in league his­to­ry to log 23 sea­sons; he’ll add at least one more to that this sea­son. He al­so be­came the first play­er in the league to have a son as a team­mate, with Bron­ny James play­ing along­side him with the Lak­ers.

The list of James’ ac­co­lades to this point are be­yond com­par­i­son.

He’s a 22-time All-Star, a 21-time All-NBA se­lec­tion, a four-time Most Valu­able Play­er, a four-time NBA Fi­nals MVP, a three-time All-Star Game MVP, and was part of the NBA’s 75th an­niver­sary team. He’s com­ing off a sea­son where he av­er­aged 20.9 points, 6.1 re­bounds, and 7.2 as­sists per game, and for his ca­reer, he’s av­er­aged 26.8 points, 7.5 re­bounds, and 7.4 as­sists in more than 1,600 games.